MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - How long before we see a LIMIT on the number of reads we are "allowed"

CazMar · 03-13-2011, 08:12 PM

Unless the idea of a "5 read rental" or similar was backed up with a big price incentive I can't see any publisher willing to be the first to try this. With higher restriction there is much more incentive to "pirate" books - music publishers were forced into this reality with MP3 files. You can already get a lot of EBooks on file sharing sites but most readers are honest and don't want to be bothered with this (or risk viruses from these often dubious sites). Give them enough incentive and they'll soon lose that inhibition.
The one big market I could see for limited ownership would be textbooks (but on a time based limit, not the number of reads). These could be marketed as a cheap 6 month rental. As it is, students often sell their textbooks 2nd hand when they have finished a course, so it would have to be priced to compete against that market.

03-13-2011, 08:12 PM	#55
CazMar Book Geek Posts: 596 Karma: 1499085 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Adelaide, Australia Device: Kobo Touch, Asus MemPad 7" tablet, Nexus 5, Asus 10" tablet	Unless the idea of a "5 read rental" or similar was backed up with a big price incentive I can't see any publisher willing to be the first to try this. With higher restriction there is much more incentive to "pirate" books - music publishers were forced into this reality with MP3 files. You can already get a lot of EBooks on file sharing sites but most readers are honest and don't want to be bothered with this (or risk viruses from these often dubious sites). Give them enough incentive and they'll soon lose that inhibition. The one big market I could see for limited ownership would be textbooks (but on a time based limit, not the number of reads). These could be marketed as a cheap 6 month rental. As it is, students often sell their textbooks 2nd hand when they have finished a course, so it would have to be priced to compete against that market.